In poetry, a stanza is a division of four or more lines having a fixed length, meter, or rhyming scheme. Stanzas in poetry are similar to paragraphs in prose. The pattern of a stanza is determined by the number of feet in each line, and by its metrical or rhyming scheme.

On Prosody: Tips for Scanning Poetry

1. Read the poem aloud.
2. As you read the poem aloud, try tapping your foot or pounding your hand on a desk when you hear the accented syllables.
3. Read more than one line.
4. Mark the stressed syllables first, and then go back and mark the unstressed syllables.

Scansion is the process of marking the stresses in a poem, and working out the metre from the distribution of stresses. The verb is to scan. ‘Mark’ can be taken to mean both ‘notice’ and ‘annotate’, the latter often done with a u for an unstressed syllable and a slash, /, for a stressed one. The verb is to scan.

Examples of Scansion of Famous Poems: Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven”: Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Sonnets are written in iambic pentameter, so the scansion is made easy because the lines have five feet with a pattern of unstressed, stressed syllables.

How Is Scansion Marked in a Poem? A graphic scansion visually marks the syllabic rhythm and feet in a line of poetry. A simple scan of a poem might simply bold or underline the stressed syllables. More formal scansion places a graphic representation to denote the feet and stresses in a line.

Scansion, the analysis and visual representation of a poem’s metrical pattern. The purpose of scansion is to enhance the reader’s sensitivity to the ways in which rhythmic elements in a poem convey meaning. Deviations in a poem’s metrical pattern are often significant to its meaning.

Here’s how to do scansion.

1. Write a line of poetry on the board. Separate each foot with a straight line.
2. After marking the scansion, identify the meter. If you identified the example as iambic pentameter, give yourself a pat on the back.

When you say the word [NOSTRIL], you pronounce the [NOS] slightly louder, at a slightly higher pitch, and for a slightly longer duration than when you pronounce the [tril]. The first syllable [NOS] is STRESSED, and the second syllable [tril] is UNstressed.

How to Scan Verse

1. speak the line as you normally would, pronouncing words as you normally would.
2. make marks on your script to indicate which syllables are stressed (or, on the “downbeat”) and which are unstressed (“upbeat”)
3. try to figure out what that means for your personality/emotional state (this is covered in “Analyzing Scansion”)

In English poetry, the definition of trochee is a type of metrical foot consisting of two syllables—the first is stressed and the second is an unstressed syllable.

Here’s a quick and simple definition: A trochee is a two-syllable metrical pattern in poetry in which a stressed syllable is followed by an unstressed syllable. The word “poet” is a trochee, with the stressed syllable of “po” followed by the unstressed syllable, “et”: Po-et.

A metrical foot, spondee is a beat in a poetic line that consists of two accented syllables (stressed/stressed) or DUM-DUM stress pattern.

The Trochaic tetrameter is a line of four consecutive trochees. A trochee is a two-syllable metrical pattern in poetry in which a stressed syllable is followed by an unstressed syllable.

Dactylic hexameter consists of lines made from six (hexa) feet, each foot containing either a long syllable followed by two short syllables (a dactyl: – ˇ ˇ) or two long syllables (a spondee: – –). The first four feet may either be dactyls or spondees. The fifth foot is normally (but not always) a dactyl.

Outlining and Drafting the Epic Poem. Create an outline of your epic poem’s plot. Since an epic poem is so long, it is helpful to outline the action of your story before you begin writing it. Take all of the ideas you have developed for your epic poem, and put them into an outline.

To notate the scansion of a poem, first doublespace the poem. Then add the scansion marks above each line by hand or with a keyboard using the keys for accent mark /, lower case u, backslash / , and straight line |.

Dactylic Hexameter is a very important meter in Greek and Latin poetry. It is especially associated with epic poetry, and so is referred to as “heroic”. The very words “dactylic hexameter” often stand for epic poetry.